Watching the ranking, you can see that, unbelievably, Norton, known to being very heavy (the latest I tried it’s version 2003), has got much better, arriving in fourth position, even scoring better than NOD32, known to being very light.

Moreover it looks like Norton now sells for just 12$?? Wasn’t it around $50 / year??

Today I wanted to go in safe mode with Windows 8. I supposed that the right way to go there is like it worked for the past 20 years, I pressed F8 at the startup (it worked even with DOS, before Windows). But I didn’t manage to access it: I was pressing F8 and nothing happened.

Why?

Microsoft changed the way to access safe mode. 😡

Not only that. It’s no more a safe mode anymore. It’s just a recovery panel.

Anyway, now there are four different ways to access it:

If you have a problem, hope that Windows will detect it and go it automatically 🙄

Select it from the EFI BIOS – but on most computers, quick boot is enabled, meaning it’s going to be hidden – hard to reach 😑

Select “reboot” from the shutdown menu while pressing the SHIFT key

Edit the boot options in msconfig. I won’t explain this, because if your computer can open msconfig (read: it works fine), it means you don’t need to go in safe mode.

The easiest way is the third, rebooting while pressing shift (very intuitive, I’ll say… almost impossible to guess it!), but what to do if Windows does not load?

Unfortunately the solution is using the setup DVD or a restore disk that you made before…

They hid all the classic application replacing them with others, more stylish, but less functional.

There is no calculator, but why use it when you can see the weather forecast in full screen with an animation of the clouds?

And then, why bother with complicated programs when you can play the piano in full screen with the mouse?

Anyway, with all of those really useful apps, the new user it’s very tempted to try them. So, I immedietely try the new Stocks app.

I click and nothing happens.

I click again, and nothing happens.

Wow, that’s more useful than I thought! 😅

After some minutes of trying some different settings, I discovered that the minimum resolution to open any application is 1024×768. The default resolution in VirtualBox, or with an unsupported video card is 800×600, too low to run any program except for Internet Explorer

So, if you want to run any Metro program, just increase the screen resolution:

Very often, people give me a VEM file that they had on their USB drive

I am a bit stunned, what is a *.vem file??? 😕 The original file owner said it was a word file… 😖

It is very easy: USB drives from Sony, are bundled with a “compressor” software that automatically compresses files during file copy. So, you might believe to have copied a *.DOC file, you will end to have a *.VEM file on your MicroVault…

To decompress it, you have to use the bundled decompressor, but… what if you are using the drive in a guest computer? Or what if you have received a VEM file by email?

So easy, just download the VEM Decompressor! No install, plain and easy, just select the file that you need to decompress, and you are done! 😎👍

SUPER is an awesome video converter. It can convert any kind of video without problems. Even rare containers like *.NSV, *.STR, *.VIV!

It can produce any video format:

Once chosen the video container format, we choose the video codec, the audio codec, the video resolution, the framerate, the bitrate, and presto! In just a few minutes, it converts ANYTHING!

SUPER (acronym of “Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer”), can be downloaded from the official Website, but, that Website is a kind of a mess, so you can download it from here (version updated to April 2009).

Update 18th august 2016: their latest installer contains adware. Be careful and read carefully what are you agreeing to, don’t install toolbars and other useless and deceiving adware.